Darwin's Nightmare -Hubert Sauper, 2004 What is the central argument or narrative of the film?
Darwin's Nightmare describes in detail several ecological, social, and economic disasters that concurrently wreak havoc on the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania. The film argues that a "perfect storm" of abysmal failures - invasive fish species in Lake Victoria, famine, persistent poverty and disease (AIDS), political corruption and endless regional war, commercial exploitation of natural resources, prostitution, and labor/family conflicts - have combined to sink the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania into a state of social collapse.
What sustainability problems does the film draw out?
Political?
The government of Tanzania is largely corrupt and inept. Destabilized by decades of conflict, the government makes little effort to improve the welfare of the citizenry, so they are often left to their own devices in terms of obtaining security, food, employment, shelter, and healthcare. The population also depends on an insufficient amount of aid from Europe, the UN, and pan-African organizations. The film does an excellent job in showing how the health of a nation can be paralyzed by inept government - a situation that is in fact a "dream scenario" for the many international corporations who siphon resources out of Africa. With little to no oversight over resource harvesting/extraction practices, wages, employee safety, and infrastructural maintenance, corporations are free to maximize profit and externalize risk while providing few benefits to the people in their zones of influence.
Legal?
The film portrayed an environment where the rule of law is almost nonexistent. Due to the ineffectiveness of the Tanzanian government, the people portrayed in the film had to find myriad ways to fend for themselves - whether it is the underpaid guard at the National Fisheries Institute taking security into his own hands or orphaned children fighting in the streets for food (they can't afford to go to school so they have no other place to go) - the film depicts a country where civil order has broken down. Furthermore, the same planes that were used to ship fish out of the region were also used to smuggle arms into the country, further enflaming regional conflicts.
Economic?
The film describes the importance of the fishing industry to the Lake Victoria region but argues further that there has been a shift in the way the fishing industry has affected the people living near Lake Victoria. Before the introduction of the invasive Nile Perch species into Lake Victoria in the 1960s, the population around Lake Victoria harvested native species and engaged in subsistence agriculture to support themselves. The Nile Perch proved to be a valuable export only because the local population was ill-equipped to harvest the fish - locally-crafted nets are too delicate to catch the heavy fish and the consistency of the meat is such that the population has difficulty processing, smoking, and preserving it. To be fair, the presence of the fish industry does result in some jobs for the locals (in the factories, on the airport runways, on the water), but the net value of the jobs available is meager compared to the value of the product being taken out of Lake Victoria.
Technological?
There is a harsh dichotomy between the technology available to the fishing industry and to the local inhabitants. The fishing industry has access to airplanes and railroads to ship its product, it has modern factories equipped with electricity and other utilities, and it has access to the materials and machinery (netting, freezers, etc.) necessary to harvest and process the Nile Perch. The local population, on the other hand, does not have reliable access to electricity, modern transportation, or any other modern utilities (fish netting, sewerage, potable water, medicine and hospitals, etc.) that could improve their standard of living.
Media and informational?
Several times the film included insightful excerpts from Tanzanian and international radio and television broadcasts that implied the Tanzanian government suppressed much of the truth about the country's problems - the nature and severity of armed conflicts and the toll that recurrent droughts were having on parts of Tanzania (famine) were not accurately or extensively discussed in the Tanzanian media. Furthermore, the film implied that first-world consumers (the fish is exported primarily to the EU) had no knowledge of the struggle and suffering behind the harvesting, processing, and export sequence of the Nile Perch.
Organizational?
Besides the efforts of the UN and other international aid groups, there were few other organizations depicted that had the competence or expertise to make any real difference in the region. The film briefly showed a meeting of the International Ecological Congress in Kenya in which members were shown a video describing how the invasive Nile Perch had decimated the native wildlife in Lake Victoria, but it was unclear what actions (if any) they planned to take to remedy the situation. Most likely they'd study the situation, issue some reports, and move on and forget about the problem (business as usual in any bureaucracy). It was also unclear what the goals of Tanzania's National Fisheries Institute were - is it supposed to maintain the stock of Nile Perch in Lake Victoria or is it supposed to reintroduce native species into the lake?
Educational?
Most children (and their parents) in the region are far too poor to participate in formal schooling. More devastating however, is the proliferation of HIV/AIDs throughout the region due to a campaign of misinformation on the effective use of condoms to prevent the spread of STDs. In many instances, the churches in the country actively discourage condom use and spread false information that condoms are unsafe, ineffective, and against God.
Behavioral?
As discussed above, the spread of HIV and other diseases due to misinformation on condom use has paralyzed the society by causing a breakdown in family order. HIV destroys family stability (which could have provided some effective social cohesion in the region) - dying parents leave behind numerous orphans who need to fend for themselves in order to survive on the street. The orphans are eventually reduced to behaving like animals - they fight over scraps of food, attack and rob people in the streets, engage in prostitution, and resort to drug use to escape their miserable world.
Cultural?
Without access to formal education, and lured by the distractions of hustling, prostitution, drug use, and stealing, generations of locals in this region will grow up incapable of ever contributing to stable civilization. They will not know how to form and raise families, take advantage of formal employment opportunities (if they ever arrive), or participate in the political process to form a government that could have the power to look after the welfare of its citizenry. No doubt the corporations working in the area have introduced and perpetuated a culture of bribery and corruption - to the point that a "bribe" is no longer seen as such but is now considered a mandatory and expected fee for services.
Ecological?
The most obvious and pressing environmental concern in the film was the destruction that the invasive Nile Perch species was causing in Lake Victoria. Scores of native species in the lake had been wiped out by the aggressive Nile Perch and the entire ecosystem in the region was in decline. The film also alluded to several droughts that were inducing famines in parts of Tanzania.
What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?
The film did an excellent job in depicting how many of the affected people were stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty with no apparent way out. The viciousness of this cycle was even extended to the plight of the pilots. Primarily from eastern Europe, these pilots are comparatively as desperate as the locals and often discuss how they miss their families as they grudgingly take up jobs transporting fish out of Africa (No doubt there are few aviation-related employment opportunities in eastern Europe). The pilots are overworked and underpaid; perhaps their seemingly callous disregard for the absymal local living standards is a result of their own mistreatment: it would be easy for one of them to think "Things aren't that good for me and I'm barely making ends meet. Why should I care about these people when I have my own problems to deal with?"
What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?
I felt that the film's accusatory tone towards the factory management (in regards to refusing selling the fish to the locals) and towards the pilots (in regards to knowingly smuggling arms into the country) was unrealistic - the film suggested that individuals (pilots and factory managers) should make independent altruistic efforts to assist the locals (i.e.- selling the fish cheaply to locals or refusing to carry arms into the country). The creators of the film should have realized that even management has little control of the situation and that it was pointless to try goading the upper echelons of the industry into engaging in altruism. After all, the factory manager may personally be deeply disturbed by the situation on the ground, but he is powerless to do anything about it. Redirecting some of the fish or profits to the locals will only outrage his bosses (the management back home in Europe) and lead to his prompt replacement. In their eyes - "How dare a manager in Africa chip away at our profitability?" Furthermore, the profit motive behind the corporation's upper management is driven by their legal duty to maximize profit for the benefit of their shareholders. If they engage in any altruism, they'll be replaced too! As for the pilots - if they altruistically refused to smuggle arms into the country, they'd be promptly replaced as well - there are plenty of downtrodden and underemployed pilots waiting who are anxious for employment and have no qualms about smuggling - they'll do anything for a job.
What additional information does this film compel you to seek out? Where do you want to dig deeper and what connections do you want to make with other issues, factors, problems, etc?
The film begins to touch upon the nature of governance and how the lack of effective government oversight can impede any sustainability efforts. More specifically, I would like this film to tie into the larger issues of resource exploitation and the resulting environmental degradation. The situation in Tanzania is far from unique - whether it is mountaintop coal mining in the US, oil shale in Canada, blood diamonds in Sierra Leone, gold mining in South Africa, ivory poaching in Kenya, or oil theft in Nigeria - commercial exploitation thrives everywhere in the world by fostering and promoting a culture of governmental corruption in order to maintain a system of weak governments incapable of defending their citizenry and natural resources. History has shown that stubborn leaders who try to protect their country's natural resources quickly become candidates for assassination or deposition - Mossadegh in Iran (Oil), Allende in Chile (Copper), Castro in Cuba (Sugarcane), and numerous other examples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
What audiences does the film best address? What kind of imagination is fostered in viewers? Do you think the film is likely to change the way viewers think about and act on environmental problems?
The film is obviously oriented towards first world viewers who, for one reason or another, are often ignorant of the conditions in the third world and are unaware of how their consumption practices help perpetuate the abysmal living conditions in the third world. The film is unlikely to change the opinions of those rightists who constantly insist that living conditions and happiness are solely affected by the personal motivation, attitudes, and behaviors of those who are suffering ("Pull yourself up by your bootstraps"). However, the film, if shown to a wide enough audience, could convince reasonable individuals to reconsider their purchasing practices or to at least make more of an effort to learn how the product they consume is produced. I suspect that some individuals in Europe might be persuaded to stop consuming the Nile Perch if they saw the film.
What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?
The film does not clearly tell the viewers what needs to be done (nor should it). While the filmmakers do try to encourage some of the fish export industry's employees to make personal efforts to combat local poverty and starvation, I feel that the overarching theme of the film shows that personal altruism will do little to improve the situation (and most likely would be unfeasible in an era of globalization). We already know that sending boatloads of money to Africa does not work - funds are simply funneled away by corrupt governments. A restructuring of international corporatism would be required where strong precedents against wanton resource extraction would need to be established - this is unlikely to ever occur, however. A self-perpetuating cycle of corruption, lax regulation, unbridled access to resources, social instability, and insatiable consumer demand allows this system to function in perpetuity. However, the coming era of fossil fuel scarcity may lead to a reversal of globalization, a fracturing of planet-wide transportation and market networks, and a breakdown of order in the fossil-fuel dependent first world that will leave us grappling with enormous domestic issues to the point that we'll no longer be able to procure resources from distant places in the world (we'll no longer have the financial or military resources to do so).
What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value?
I would have appreciated a more in-depth analysis on the specifics of the ecological devastation in Lake Victoria. Why were the perch introduced to Lake Victoria and who introduced them? What were the original goals behind the introduction, if any? What are the anatomical differences between the native fish and the perch - why was the perch introduced to a region where the locals were not even capable of harvesting and processing it? How many species of native fauna were wiped out by the perch and how fast did the disintegration of the lake ecosystem occur? Is there some easy process of removal that could be initiated with the perch? Is the condition of the lake beyond the "point of no return;" that is, has the ecosystem been damaged to such an extent that even if the perch were removed from the lake, it would be unable to recover to its original stable state?
Darwin's Nightmare - Hubert Sauper, 2004
What is the central argument or narrative of the film?
What sustainability problems does the film draw out?
What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?
What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?
What additional information does this film compel you to seek out? Where do you want to dig deeper and what connections do you want to make with other issues, factors, problems, etc?
What audiences does the film best address? What kind of imagination is fostered in viewers? Do you think the film is likely to change the way viewers think about and act on environmental problems?
What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?
What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value?
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